


Hold Fast

by TheColorBlue



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Dark, East of the Sun West of the Moon, Fairy Tale Style, Gen, The little mermaid - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-09 12:32:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sitron is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix#B.C3.A4ckah.C3.A4st.2C_b.C3.A6khest">Bäckahästen</a>, the brook horse said to drown and devour humans. Hans is the prince who has come to capture the fairy tale beast. </p><p>Inspired by <a href="http://magickedteacup.tumblr.com/post/73989268650/bookshop-scandinavian-tales-and">this</a>. This fic also has more to do with my fic <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1043584/chapters/2086026">The Prince with Thirteen Virtues</a> than anything else, really, but probably can be read as stand-alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Sitron was a foal, his mother taught him about the flesh of humans. Grown-up humans often had distasteful flesh; bitter from greed and selfishness and violence. Even human children could be wicked, which soured the taste of them. Better to eat the fish in the brook, or to snap up the geese or ducks that came to refresh themselves with the water, or any other animals that happened by. 

Every creature took on the qualities of that which it ate. Fish flesh was sweet like the fresh water, and goose flesh had the taste of blood pumping through muscles refreshed by the high thin air of the sky. 

Once, Sitron enticed a traveling human to climb on his back, and he drowned the man in the brook. He sniffed the bloated body afterwards, uncertain and curious, before tearing into the meat of his back. Blood ran into the soil of the waterbank. The taste of the flesh hit Sitron’s tongue, and he retched. The man had done terrible violence to a woman. Sitron could taste it in the blood, and his stomach heaved and his eyes watered and he gagged and gagged. He took in a mouthful of the brook water and spat it out again in the mud beside the man. He dragged the man’s body away, far from the brook where creatures of less discerning tastes could get to it. He went back to the brook and lay down on the rocks with the water running over him and he was sick for the whole day after.

—

When Sitron was older, though young still, by most standards—a human came to his brook, smelling of iron. Sitron could smell the faint poison of the metal tinging the air, and he hunkered down at the bottom of the brook in fear. 

The human was a young man. Sitron could make himself look like either a horse or a human, and he knew this human man was very beautiful to look at. In other circumstances, Sitron might have even felt shy, looking at his face. But the human man was pacing the bank of the brook wearing an expression that Sitron did not like, and then the man threw a net into the brook where Sitron was. Sitron screamed when the net tangled over his right arm, when he didn’t move fast enough. The net was rope, with beads of iron fastened into it. He struggled to the surface and clawed himself to land. He made himself human, so that his limbs were smaller, so he could get out of the net. The pain of the iron against his bare skin intensified, lancing up through his arm, and Sitron tenuous possession of consciousness slipped away as he passed out. 

—

When Sitron came too, he was chained up with manacles of brass. The iron beads had burned into his arm; he would have scars, undoubtedly. He shivered, although he was not cold, and then shied away, whimpering, when the man came closer. It was hard to read the look on the man’s face. He offered Sitron water in a tin bowl, and Sitron stared at it, then at the human, and then lapped and gulped the water down, too thirsty to care. He was probably going to die, anyway, and he’d been out of the water for too long already. The water eased the sick feeling in him, but then he curled up as best he could and shut his eyes. He whimpered again when he felt gloved hands touch his hair, brushing it away from his face. 

“When my brother Pavl sent me chasing after magical beasts for his private collection, this wasn’t what I was expecting,” the man said. “Traipsing through the woods and discovering… well, you. I’m not sure if I’m disappointed, or how I feel.” The man tucked a strand of Sitron’s hair behind his ear. “Easier than that snow bitch’s frost giant, I’ll tell you that. _That_ one nearly killed me.”

“Please let me go,” Sitron begged. “Please. Please let me go.” 

The man sat back on his heels and hmmed a little. “I went out of my way to get you, you know. Pavl won’t be pleased to see me come home empty-handed, and with my being in disgrace already, going home will be hell.” The man’s pleasant tone had given way to venom. Sitron tucked his face closer to the damp leaves under him, feeling his heart beat hard in his chest. 

“He’ll put you into a cage, you know,” the man said. “A cage with iron in the bars so you can’t get out, and a gilded bathtub for you to spend your days in, and if that isn’t a life for a water horse, I don’t know what is.” 

When the man touched him again, Sitron jerked back, finally ready to fight so that he could at least die out here, in the open air—but the man was only fitting a key into the manacles locking his wrists together. 

“Pavl sent me to find a monster,” he said. “I’ve only found a horse. A pathetic one at that. But then again, perhaps Pavl should have thought up better compensation for my fool’s errand, and maybe also thought of how I never do harm to horses.” Then he added, unlocking Sitron’s ankles, “try to drown me, and I’ll have three ways to poison you before you’ve gotten me as far as the bank of the brook. The corpse of a Bäckahästen is better than nothing to show for my troubles.”

Sitron didn’t move, even after the man had taken the chains and manacles away. He only sat up when the man had moved away as well, was going to the common horse he had tied up to a tree across the clearing. 

The man glanced back at him, and Sitron looked away at the ground, shying away again. “Thank you,” he whispered. 

The man didn’t say anything. He rummaged around in a bag tied to the horse and retrieved a jar, which he uncapped. He came back, and Sitron sat very still as the man applied a cream to where the iron had burned him. The cream was cool, and soothing. When he was done, the man capped the jar again, and said, like conversation, “the best way to put another being in your debt is to show them kindness. Of course there will always be ungrateful wretches out there, but—why not. Why not use the path of least resistance. Why not be the sun getting the coat off the man, with gentle, unceasing heat, instead of the wind blustering away, trying to blow the coat off with force.”

He reached over and smoothed the hair from Sitron’s face, and Sitron did not move. Then the man had stood up, walked away, mounted his horse, and was riding out of the clearing. 

Sitron turned back into a horse and then pawed at the ground, feeling uncertain, and hesitating. Then, like a fool, and knowing he was a fool, he followed the man as he rode towards the edge of the forest, towards the human roads, and away from the brook that Sitron had always known.


	2. Chapter 2

At first, Sitron followed from a distance.

But as the day wore on, he found that he was closer and closer to the man and his horse, until finally the man looked back at him, and Sitron cautiously cantered up alongside. The man’s horse was a mare called “Buttercup.” As a common horse, she and Sitron didn’t necessarily have much in similarity, necessarily, but she seemed to tolerate Sitron accompanying alongside, although a sense of wariness was there. Unlike Buttercup, for example, Sitron was a predatory animal, and she wouldn’t tolerate his getting _too_ close yet. She threatened to bite. Sitron meekly kept the acceptable distance between them. 

“Buttercup is smarter than you are, apparently,” the man said. “Still trying to drown me after all, are you? Or did you change your mind about cages?” When Sitron laid his ears back, a tense position, and swished his tail, snorting with it, the man laughed. “Go home,” he said, but made no move to chase Sitron away. 

In the evening, the man stopped by a stream. Sitron happily went over to refresh himself in it, and to fish. When he came out again, the man was eating an apple. He looked at Sitron, then pulled another apple out of his bags, and waved it at Sitron. “Do you like these?”

Sitron bobbed his head. Mostly, he ate meat, but sometimes he grazed on grass as a digestive aid, and he’d eat fruit too. The man tossed the apple over, and Sitron crunched it up from the ground. 

Buttercup was grazing from the patch of wild plants and grasses near Hans, and only looked over when Hans came to brush his hand over her neck, almost absently. Sitron watched the movement of it, feeling strangely envious. He trotted closer, and then changed into his human appearance. 

The man gave Sitron an unreadable look, and then turned to pull the jar of cream from his bag again. He motioned for Sitron to come closer, and they sat down. The man took off one glove and reapplied the cream to Sitron’s wounds.

“I’ll be staying at an inn tonight, in a town not far from here,” the man said as he applied the cream. “You can’t come with me there.” 

Sitron didn’t say anything. When the man was done with the cream, Sitron laid his head against the man’s knee, softly, then gave the man a sort of sideways, wide-eyed look. 

The man reached over and caught Sitron by the chin. It was neither a gentle gesture, nor a rough one. He held Sitron there, like daring him to try moving away before he was allowed. “You haven’t said a word all day,” he said. “Come on. Say something.”

Sitron felt caught in his gaze. The man wore a look impenetrable as a glacier. Sitron licked suddenly dry lips, and then said, nearly whispering it, “I—you were kind to me.” 

The man actually barked out a laugh then. “I scarred you for life, I wouldn’t call that kindness.” 

“You were kind to me,” Sitron repeated. “And I— want to follow you. I want to know what kind of man you are.” 

The man released Sitron, almost pushing him away with the force of it, and then he pulled back on his glove. 

He stood up, put away the jar, and he said, “I’ve shown you what kind of man I am because I didn’t expect you to follow me back to court. Or, then again, perhaps I did, and perhaps I thought that my show of wickedness and coldness would seduce you into becoming my personal servant. Imagine, having a Bäckahästen at your beck and call. You could drown your enemies with no one the wiser.” He looked down at Sitron, still at his feet. Then he knelt down, and took Sitron’s face in his gloved hands. “Tell me your name,” he said. 

Sitron went still. 

To give this man his name would be to give the man absolute power over him. The man could ask Sitron to do whatever he wanted. He could have asked Sitron to cut himself open with a knife, and Sitron would have been forced to do it. 

“No,” Sitron said, his voice quiet, but unwavering. 

The man smiled, and the smile did not reach his eyes. 

He leant forward and kissed the corner of Sitron’s mouth. 

“Go home, little bird,” he said. 

Then he stood up and remounted his horse without looking back at Sitron, resuming his journey home. 

Sitron waited until the man had gone and gone, and then he put his nose to the air and followed the scent. 

He did not want to go home, where there was only his brook and the squirrels, and the water fowl and the fish flitting by. 

He followed the man to the little town, and then the next day through the farm country, and the next day until he came to the capitol of the Southern Isles, where so many of the humans lived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Buttercup" is the name of Prince Topher's horse in the 2013 Cinderella on Broadway musical; Topher is also played by Santino Fontana (voice actor for Hans).


	3. Chapter 3

The capitol of the Southern Isles was a city of canals. Sitron skirted round the human settlement and main roads and went out to the sea. He dove in and followed the water into the city. He was a brook horse, so the salt water disagreed with him—he couldn’t take in the water the way he could fresh water—so he kept close to the surface and cloaked himself in the light of the waves to keep the humans from spotting him. Some of the human ships had iron in them, and Sitron steered clear of them.

There was a canal that went straight into the city, right up to the square in front of the capitol’s central palace.

When it was dark in the evening, Sitron pulled himself up, and looked at the palace in the wonder. He wondered if he would see his human. There were lights in the windows and guards and people walking about, and Sitron laid his cheek to arms and looked round and wondered and wondered. Everything seemed to strange and alien. 

—

The next day, he went out to sea again to fish, and took his catch back to the lonely beaches. He sat on the sand amidst the wild sea grasses and plants, and sucked down the sleek flesh. The blood of them slacked his thirst, but still he craved fresh water. He changed from a horse to a human shape, and scrubbed at his salt-crusted hair unhappily. Then the sun began to bake his skin, and he changed back to a horse.

He lay down and looked longingly at the human city in the distance. 

The human man found him lying in the sand. He was riding Buttercup. Sitron looked up at the man, happily, and even more happily when the man tossed down a flask that turned out to be filled with fresh water. He guzzled it down, washing the salt and sand from his mouth. 

The man dismounted his horse, and then strode up to Sitron. He seemed angry, Sitron realized, and he shied away, but the man had already caught him by the chin. 

“You fool,” he snapped. “A castle guard reported seeing someone in the water, or perhaps it was a horse? And a fisherman reported the same in the morning. Pavl heard the reports and has been inspecting the canals personally— _idiot_ , if he were to catch you, I would have no power to free you again, _don’t you understand_?”

Sitron skittered back, and the man let go of him. 

“Go on, run away,” the man shouted. “To see another soul caged in that godforsaken castle—it would bring me no greater pleasure, believe you me. Get out of here!” 

Sitron didn’t run. He didn’t want to. 

A long moment passed, the two of them looking at each other, neither moving. 

The man drew in a breath, and then he was shrugging off his jacket. He threw it at Sitron’s feet. 

“Put that round your waist,” the man snapped. “If I can’t—if I can’t trust you to leave here on your own, you’ll come with me.”

Sitron picked up the jacket and looked at it uncertainly, until the man had come over, drawn him to his feet, and then tied the garment around his middle. He helped Sitron onto Buttercup’s back, and then he was mounting after, and then they were heading at a gallop into the city.

They went to the palace, and that was when Sitron saw the man’s mien change. He pulled Buttercup to a stop to talk and laugh with one of the castle’s guards, spinning some yarn about having picked up this idiot, this university student who’d gotten his clothes stolen at the beach. The guard called the man “Prince Hans.” There was something about the man’s voice then that made Sitron want to shy away, the way it went happy and sweet; nearly too sweet. There was something about the shape of his mouth and the shape his eyes made. But he clung to the man from where he was seated behind, and then got off Buttercup with him when they had entered the palace proper, and the man was leading him through a servant’s entrance into the palace. 

Inside the man’s personal rooms, the man drew a bath of warm water and told Sitron to get him and wash himself, he would be back with clothes.

Alone in an unfamiliar room, standing on the cold bath tiles, Sitron stared at the porcelain tub full of water. 

Then he climbed in. 

It was only big enough for him to sit in it, his knees bent a little, and his feet pressed against the other side. He cupped some water in his hands and dribbled it over his head. It felt...nice. He bent forward to dunk his head under the water, getting out the salt and sand. Then he lay back, feeling the water wrap around his body softly. He shut his eyes for a moment. He was tired, so very tired. He hadn’t been able to sleep in the salt water of the canals, with the iron of the boats all around, and he hadn’t been able to sleep on the beaches, with the sun beating down, and no trees to shade him. 

The whole room all around him smelt strange and alien. He softly brushed his fingertips against glass bottles filled with strange colored liquids that sat on the table beside the tub, and squeezed the thick yellow sponge, and then he put his hands back in the water, and curled up as best he could in the tub. 

When he woke again, it was to someone lathering soap into his hair. The man was firmly, but gently, working sweet-smelling soap into his hair, and then he told Sitron to duck his head under the water and wash it out again. 

There were clothes to put on after. There were even shoes, and Sitron did not want to put on shoes, but the man made some threat about domestic horses wearing shoes of iron, and Sitron unhappily pulled on the cumbersome footwear. 

Finally, there were gloves. 

The man, Prince Hans, said, “Humans handle iron. There’s no getting around that. When you leave this room, you must wear those gloves. If I catch you without them on—”

The man let that threat hang in the air, and Sitron quietly slid the gloves on, fitting in each finger one by one.


	4. Chapter 4

When Sitron was down dressing himself, the man looked him up and down, and then said, nearly harshly, “Well, now that you look like a human, what is it that you want to do with yourself?” 

Sitron looked at Hans in a mild confusion. “I only wanted to see what the human world is like,” he said, a little hesitantly. He fidgeted with the fit of his gloves, and then stopped when he saw Hans staring hard at him. “I was alone, in my brook. And then I wasn’t alone, and now I don’t want to be… alone anymore.” 

Hans made a noise of frustration. “You’re like a child,” he snapped. “Naive and helpless.”

“I can care for myself,” Sitron protested. “I don’t need clothes, or shelter from you, and I can feed myself. I’m not a child.” 

“That’s not what I refer to when I talk about helplessness. Come here.”

Sitron shuffled forward, hating the feel of the shoes on his feet, and the gloves on his hands, and the constricting sensation of clothes on his body. Hans reached forward and adjusted his collar and straightened his shirt. “You’re not dangerous, but humans will think you are,” Hans said. “And the ones who realize that you’re not dangerous will use you and hurt you.” He inclined his head at Sitron with a cold look. “I speak from the perspective of someone doing the using and hurting. There was a dunderhead of a girl in the kingdom of Arendelle who would have served my purposes nicely, if not for—well, in any case.” 

“If you had wanted to hurt me, I think you would have done so before now,” Sitron offered, humbly.

“That’s not how it works,” Hans said. “Which, I think, again demonstrates your naivety. In reality, timing is everything. I could be waiting for the most opportune moment to use your company to my advantage. What do you want, little bird? The sooner we get that desire satisfied or out of you, the sooner I can send you home.”

“I already told you, I want to learn things and see your world. And I want...to be with someone.”

“Ah, see now. That’s interesting. Are you looking to court a potential bride then? I’ve heard all kinds of stories, folk tales and fairy tales—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sitron said confusedly. “I only mean that I don’t want to be alone.” Then quieter, shyer, “Aren’t you ever lonely?” he asked. “Or, do you have—”

“I don’t have anyone,” Hans said shortly. “I have twelve brothers, and a mother and father who have retired away to a countryside estate now that Immanuel has been handed the crown, and no one wants to have anything to do with me except to send me round as an errand or messenger boy. In fact, any one of the more decent ones will likely tell you that you ought to have nothing to do with me, and _frankly_ they’d be right.”

—

“You really shouldn’t have anything do with Hans,” Theodor told Sitron in confidence. Theodor was one of Hans’ brothers. Hans had allowed Sitron to follow him to the palace library, where he was digging out and organizing the older manuscripts they had on known magical creatures in the Southern Isles. Hans had been muttering something to Sitron about needing to update the materials on brook horses, now that he’d encountered a real specimen, but Sitron wasn’t sure if Hans had been serious or just talking.

“Hans has been kind to me,” Sitron said, and Theodor rolled his eyes then shook his head.

“Ah, but that’s exactly it. Hans here always uses honey to get what he wants. Smart kid, that Hans. Vinegar never attracted butterflies. I’m giving you fair warning because you look… well, honestly, and no offense meant, but you look like a kid who’s been sheltered in some sweet home in the countryside and Hans will eat you alive. Is he trying to get you to sleep with him? _Don’t let him seduce you_ , he’s not worth it, you poor thing.” 

“What the hell are you telling him?” Hans shouted down from the upper story shelves. 

“Nothing, you brat,” Theodor shouted back, and it was odd watching Theodor’s face, Sitron thought. It was odd seeing the confusion of feelings, like sardonic fondness and distrust and disappointment mixed together. “What’s your name?” Theodor asked Sitron. 

“Frederik,” Sitron said, which was the name that Hans had been giving around. Sitron did not like the name Frederik, but then again he was not sure he would have liked any other name except Sitron, which was his. 

After a while, Theodor left, and Sitron looked at the books. Most of them were bound in cloth or leather, and there was a dusty, papery smell, and Sitron couldn’t read anything, but he touched the spines reverently, and looked at the words, and the illustrations of those that had illustrations. His mother had told him about books, a long time ago. Then he touched the smooth carvings of the library’s elaborate fixtures, all the dark wood and painted fixtures and decorated lamps. He was wearing the gloves, but he could sort of feel things through them, though muffled by the cloth.

Then he looked up and realized that Hans was watching him, and Sitron felt wistful in his chest, looking back, even with the cool expression on Hans’ face, and the distance between. Sitron looked away first and ran his fingers again over the vines carved into the wall.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: this chapter contains some mild sexual content

Even with allowing Sitron to follow him around, Hans didn’t stop trying to drive him away. 

Prince Pavl kept exotic birds in the east wing palace aviary. 

There was the menagerie as well, with exotic animals, but that was beyond the lawns and gardens, and probably Hans had thought that he was proving enough of point by showing Sitron the ones in the palace. 

Many of the cages were made with steel, and Sitron would not touch them for the iron in them. 

He watched the birds flutter about in their cages though, and then looked down at his gloved hands. Hans said, beside him, “Do you want to go home yet?”

“No,” Sitron said.

Sitron had folded his hands together, sort of holding them to his chest, as he backed away from the cages, but he kept his voice firm, he hoped. 

“I don’t want to go home,” he repeated. 

Hans looked at him. Then he took Sitron by the wrist, and took him away from the aviary. 

It was evening. Sitron was hungry, and thirsty, and very tired by now, and he wanted to open his mouth to tell Hans—he needed to go out of the palace, to find food. But then he wondered if—if once he left, would Hans refuse to allow him back in? It was a horrible thought—why would a brook horse willingly go back into this human dwelling of stone and wood and closed-in corridors and cages. 

He was taken back to Hans’ personal quarters, and Hans sat him down in one of the chairs and told him not to leave the room. Then Hans left. 

Sitron was thirsty. He went into the bathroom and turned on a tap and cupped water in his hands and tasted it. The water seemed acceptable to him, so he gulped some of it down. When he had slacked his thirst, he went back into the other room and sat by the window and looked out. He pressed his hands to the windowpanes. Was he already trapped? Was he already in a cage? Tiredness was making his head hurt, and maybe also confusion, and he curled up on the strange-feeling cushions of the window seat and tried to close his eyes. 

He opened them again when he heard the door of the room open, after some time had passed. Hans had brought food. Sitron could smell it. 

Hans put two covered trays on a table, and Sitron came over, looking on hesitantly. One tray contained roast chicken and vegetables, the other—

“Steak tartar and raw egg,” Hans said. “I wasn’t sure what else to tell the kitchen staff—although perhaps tomorrow I’ll just have fresh fish sent up and tell them that my guest is so particular he will only prepare his own meals.”

“I can fish for myself,” Sitron said, staring hungrily at the minced uncooked steak and the cool liquid look of the eggs cracked on top. 

“I can’t allow you to keep jumping in and out our canals,” Hans said, sitting down to his chicken. “Don’t be a fool. Sooner or later someone will catch you, and how would you like that, I ask you.” 

There was sterling silver silverware, which Sitron could handle, but Sitron only wanted to take off his gloves and eat his food the way he had always eaten food. Then he looked at Hans, handling the eating-ware in his own way, and Sitron hesitated. He watched Hans, and for the first time he found himself afraid to eat. He picked up his spoon, clumsy with it, and then he put it down. 

He didn’t know what to do. 

The feeling of being in a cage, of being bound up, seemed to press in on him even harder than before. 

The food did not even look quite right, now that he was forced to think about. 

He would have eaten meat in whole pieces, not in this ground-up mess, and sucked eggs out of their shells. This human preparation forced you to eat in the way humans ate; or else to use your hands, grabbing messily while the food spilled through between your fingers; or else to put your nose to the plate and eat it that way, but somehow Sitron did not want Hans to watch him doing that. He did not know why. 

Perhaps—perhaps he wasn’t hungry after all. 

“Thank you,” Sitron heard himself say. “But—I think I’m not so hungry right now. Maybe, I will put this aside and eat it later.”

Hans looked at Sitron in a strange way. “I didn’t poison it,” he said. 

“No. No! I do not think you did,” Sitron said, quickly. “I. I’m not hungry,” he lied.

He slid off his chair and sat on the ground by the table, so that Hans could not see all of him when he curled up. “I’m not hungry,” he repeated. 

He sat there, curled up with his cheek to his knees, until he realized that Hans was offering a piece of chicken in one ungloved hand. It smelled different than what Sitron was accustomed to, but not terrible. Sitron hesitated, then delicately ate the chicken out of Hans’ hand. It wasn’t bad. Hans continued to tear pieces of chicken up and offer them to Sitron, and Sitron ate everything. When he was done, he sat with his head leaned up against Hans’ knee, and Hans ate the steak tartar instead, which was a fair trade. Sitron had eaten all of the chicken, and he sort of nuzzled his cheek to Hans’ knee. 

He didn’t know why Hans kissed him. When dinner was done, Hans had nudged Sitron to his feet, and then he had stood up too, and then Hans was kissing Sitron. One hand was gently placed at the nape of Sitron’s neck, the other at his shoulder. When Sitron kissed Hans back, Hans deepened the kiss and Sitron felt his knees weaken. 

Hans pushed him onto a nearby couch, and then he kissed Sitron’s mouth, and jaw, and neck. Then he got down on his knees between Sitron’s legs and Sitron couldn’t, he couldn’t—

He made a noise like a sob when he finally came. 

Hans got up, after that. He cleaned Sitron up with a towel from the bathroom. Then he kissed him on the cheek, almost chastely, and helped him get ready for sleep. He got out sheets and blankets for Sitron to use on that couch, and gave him a nightshirt to wear, and then he turned out the lamps and went into his bedroom. 

Sitron lay for a while on that couch.

Then he slid off the couch and lay on the carpet. 

That was a little better. 

He wriggled out of his nightshirt and lay on top of it. 

That was better too, thought still not right. 

The moon was up, and it cast unfamiliar shadows where it came through one uncurtained window. 

Here, there was no sound of running brook water, or insects, or the wind. 

There were no smells of soil and woods. 

There was only the smells of the palace: cloth, soaps, candle wax, stone, polish on the bare wood of the floor.

Sitron lay exhausted on the floor, and he could not sleep. He had been suffused with a kind of soft warmth before, but now the night chill had crept in, and he shivered, even without really being cold at all. 

Was this what he wanted, after all? All of this? 

Sitron stared at the shadows of the place where the wall met the floor, at the painted and carved wood, and then he found that he had begun to cry.

He did not know why. 

He cried with a feeling like a heavy emptiness was pressing inside his chest, and then he had to cover his face to muffle the ugly, wracking sobs. 

Candlelight was coming into the room, where Hans had opened his bedroom door, and then Hans was taking Sitron into his arms. 

Hans asked him, “Are you hurt?”

Then, “Did I hurt you?”

And Sitron shook his head and pressed his face into Hans’ shirt.

He finally fell asleep like that, his head laid in Hans’ lap, Hans’ fingers gently laid against his hair.


	6. Chapter 6

When Sitron woke the next morning, it was dawn. The sun was just beginning to light up the sky. Sitron found that he had been holding an unfamiliar pillow in his sleep, and there was a blanket that he had half kicked off. Hans was nowhere in sight. Sitron got up and hesitantly opened the door to Hans’ bedroom. There was no one in there either, and the bed was made. Hans was not in the bathroom. Then Sitron tried the door that led out into the hall and found that it was locked, and only a key would open it. 

He pushed down the sudden feeling of panic. It was all right. Perhaps, it was for protection, this locking of doors. Besides, there were windows. He was only two stories up. He could find a way down, if it came to that. 

Sitron took up the blanket from the floor and wrapped himself round in it, and then he went to sit by the window. He watched the sky light up as the sun rose. He could hear the birds outside. 

Perhaps an hour later, there was the sound of the door unlocking, and then Hans came in. He was carrying a tray of food. There was a kettle of tea, and a carafe of fresh water, and eggs, both cooked and uncooked, and sliced bread and jam and fried ham and fried fish.

Sitron inspected the eggs with interest, and then selected two uncooked ones. Their shells were speckled brown. He cracked holes in the tops with his teeth and then sucked down their insides. Hans poured water for Sitron, and tea for himself, and he did not touch anything, not even to sip the tea. He seemed… distracted, and eventually Sitron realized that Hans was looking at the scars on his arm, and Sitron set down his egg shells and reached down to cover himself again with the blanket. 

Hans smiled, and the expression did not reach his eyes. 

“I’ve taken everything from you,” he said. “I’ve taken your freedom. I’ve taken your innocence. I’ve scarred you permanently. And yet, here you remain.” 

“You haven’t taken anything,” Sitron said. “What I’ve given up, I’ve done willingly. And, I don’t blame you for the scars.”

“You should,” Hans replied. His tone had gone sharp and cold with the words. 

Then he was standing over Sitron, cupping Sitron’s cheek with one gloved hand. Everything about him seemed to change in that instant. “Tell me your name, little bird,” he said, coaxingly. A peculiar warmth had spread into his voice, cloying as syrup. “Tell me your name, and I’ll give you whatever you want. We could make love all morning. I could make you feel things you never imagined yourself ever experiencing—”

Hans had bent down closer. His breath was warm against Sitron’s cheek, but Sitron was trying to pull away, feeling the panic rise in his chest. “N-no,” he stuttered out. “Hans, please don’t—”

Hans’ expression hardened. He grabbed Sitron’s wrists hard.

“Tell me your name, or I’ll have you thrown out,” he hissed. His fingers clamped down too tightly on still newly scarring tissue, and Sitron gave a cry of pain. 

Hans released him instantly, and then he was stepping back. 

He turned away from Sitron and went to stand in front of the fireplace. 

“Hans, please,” Sitron begged. “Please don’t do this. I love you. You don’t need to find reasons for me to push you away.”

The line of Hans’ back seemed to stiffen. “Don’t say that,” he said, without turning around. “You sound too much like a fool I once knew. She was ready to marry me only a few hours after having met me. She did not know me at all. _Don’t say that_.” 

Then he turned around and asked, steadily, “At any rate, is this how you drown your victims? You make them think that you’re a being worth loving, and then you pull them under and drown them before eating their hearts. It’s what a brook horse does, isn’t it? You devour human hearts.” 

Sitron stared at Hans and then looked away, suddenly shaken. He clutched the blanket closer to his chest. He didn’t understand what Hans was trying to say. 

_He didn’t_. 

It wouldn’t have occurred to him before yesterday’s dinner, but now. Now he was more aware than ever about how misplaced he looked in that world, and did Hans really see him as something so monstrous, a monster in human clothing? But he was, wasn’t he? Hans had called him a pathetic horse, but he still was one, a water horse, and if Hans got any closer Sitron would turn on him and bare fang and perhaps break down crying…

He felt so lost. 

Oh, God.

He felt so lost. 

He couldn’t go home, now, but he could barely cope with the rules of this human world, spoons and clothes and cages and, and Hans—

 _Hans_.

Hans was kneeling at Sitron’s feet. His head was bowed and his neck was bared. “Why are you so innocent?" he asked softly. “You should be able to kill me in a moment, tear open my throat and drag me down, but you don’t. You fish and scuttle away and eat from my hand. You should have killed me when you had the chance. Drowned me in the sea. I don’t think I can stop you, now.” 

Sitron hesitantly reached out, and then gently touched his fingers to Hans’ hair. Hans looked up at Sitron, his expression carrying that familar cold and distant quality, but then he was tucking his cheek against the hollow of Sitron’s knee and all the rigidity had gone out of his shoulders and the line of his back, as he curled up against the brook horse.

“Oh,” Sitron said, breathing out.  

It was like seeing a familiar language, and Sitron sank down to the floor and held Hans’ face in his hands. 

“Don’t let’s talk anymore,” Sitron said. “I want to stop talking, if only for a few hours. I want to let you ride on my back and I’ll take you across the fields to where there is water and flowers and it’s so beautiful—”

Hans stared at Sitron, as though unbelieving. Then he laughed, a bittersweet sound. “Is this the part where you finally drown me, then? The death of a deserving man, I suppose—”

“Oh, no!” Sitron said. “No. I will take you home when you are hungry again, so that you can have your tea in kettles and toast and fried ham, or anything else you like.” 

Hans didn’t say anything at that. 

Sitron kissed Hans' cheek, and his temple, and then his mouth, when Hans turned his face towards Sitron’s, like letting Sitron lead him away to an unknown shore, and for once. 

For once Sitron knew where he was going.


End file.
